Emilio De Bono

Emilio De Bono (19 March 1866-11 January 1944) was a Marshal of Italy under the Kingdom of Italy who served in the Royal Italian Army from 1884 to 1923. De Bono was a veteran of the Italo-Turkish War, World War I, Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and World War II and was one of the Quadrumvirs of Fascist Italy from 1922 to 1943 along with Michele Bianchi, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, and Italo Balbo under Benito Mussolini. He was executed for treason by Mussolini on 11 January 1944.

Biography
Emilio De Bono was born on 19 March 1866 in Cassano d'Adda in the Province of Milan in northern Italy. In 1884 he entered the Italian Army as a Second Lieutenant and worked his way up to the General Staff in the many years of peace between 1884 and 1910. De Bono fought in the war with the Ottoman Empire in Libya and with Austria-Hungary and the German Empire in 1910 and 1914-18, retiring from command in 1920 with the rank of Major-General.

In the early 1920s, De Bono helped to organize the National Fascist Party of the Kingdom of Italy and staged the March on Rome by Fascist "Blackshirts" in 1922. In 1929 he was made Minister of Colonial Affairs and in November 1932 he wrote an invasion plan for the Ethiopian Empire. He commanded all of the forces in Italian Eritrea during the invasion of Ethiopia and Somalia, and on 16 November 1935 he was promoted to Marshal of Italy. However, the invasion's slow progress led to Pietro Badoglio replacing him as commander in December.

In 1940, De Bono was made the commander of an Italian defense force in Sicily as Italy entered World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany. De Bono was made Minister of State in 1942, but he backed Badoglio's decision to oust Mussolini from power on 27 July 1943. In late 1943, he was arrested by Mussolini's Italian Social Republic and was among the defendants tried in the Verona Trials for treason against Mussolini. On 11 January 1944, he was executed by a firing squad in Verona.